


Armida

by 17screamingoctopi



Category: Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Fallout 3 - Freeform, Fallout New Vegas - Freeform, OCs - Freeform, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-10-23 14:26:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10721151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17screamingoctopi/pseuds/17screamingoctopi
Summary: The tale of a girl raised in a vault, gone from something sweet to a walking terror.





	1. A Proposition

The world pushed, and it shoved. It put my face in the dirt, made me beg crawling on hands and knees with gravel and broken glass digging into my skin for it to stop. It tried to break me down and take away everything. But when I pushed back, not with open palms but a knife, it stopped. It all stopped.  
I tried to be kind. I tried to be loving, do as my parents wanted me to. Care for everyone, don’t hurt a soul. Make everyone's lives better. But you know what that got me? Broken bones from lack of defending myself, insults, people hurting the ones I cared about while I stood too god damn weak and defenseless to do anything. Harm to myself just so I could wait for a rescue that never came.  
However, a different rescue came. The raiders that held me captive as their personal slave for whatever depraved idea they had that day slipped up. They attacked what they thought was a defenseless caravan, as was the usual order of the week. But there were other people nearby.  
They darted in to the rescue, a flurry of laser and plasma gunfire mixed with shoddily made bullets. The opposing group protected by thick metal armor that they moved far too quickly in while the raiders had nothing more than scraps of leather and metal. Needless to say they weren't doing too well against their organized opponents.  
It was then I made my escape. While the bullets flew and the bodies fell I ran. I was dressed in rags and my feet were bare, but I managed to get away unhurt. I'm not sure how long I walked for. Maybe a day, maybe two, but eventually there was a town.  
Megaton. At least that's what the weirdly old west sounding securitron said when I walked up. I couldn't care less for what the name was, I just needed somewhere I could get water. As disgusting as those raiders were, I have to admit that they were good at getting caps. They were all dead anyway, they wouldn't need the money I took.  
The town wasn't impressive. What idiot builds a town around a fucking bomb, and what even bigger idiot starts a church worshipping it? No wonder the preacher looked old and decrepit. Standing in a pool of irradiated water doesn't do anyone any favors. Still, I followed the signs and ignored his inane babbling about gods and glowing and being saved by atoms. If I wanted to kill myself via radiation poisoning I would have done it already.  
My first stop was at some place called Craterside supply. The woman there was a few bullets short of a loaded revolver. Her guard was quiet and intimidating. I bought something more protective than tattered rags. My caps bought me a pack, ammunition, a pistol, and a baseball bat. If I had learned anything, it was that ammo was valuable. I'd rather put my strength to use and save everything else.  
She had a lot, but no food or water. “Well if it's an adventure you're going on, you should stop by the little shop near the bomb and stock up! Of course there's always Moriarty's saloon, but I wouldn't stay too long.” As if she were being watched or something, she glanced around the room and leaned in close. “He’s got the temper of a hot potato!”  
I stared blankly.  
“You know. A frag mine? Because they explode. And they're in the ground.”  
I nodded my head. “Mhmm… I'm… gonna go now." Awkwardly I excused myself, backing up with what I had bought and leaving the store.  
The saloon was closer. I wasn't really going to get in a long conversation with him, so I headed there rather than trek back down the creaky metal ramps everywhere. Honestly, I should have listened to that woman from before.  
He had a thick accent, and the exact temper described. He was berating a ghoul at the bar, something about cups not being clean enough. It quickly became a place I'd rather not frequent after seeing that display. Pretty soon it would become a place that nobody frequented. Nobody except for irradiated corpses.  
But I didn't know that yet. First I would be called over by a well dressed Man, clothed in a dingy old suit and glasses. “You there. Girl. Care for a quick chat?” He asked, his tone smooth and even. With nothing better to do, I sat at his table. This would become the event that changed my life forever. What set a timid girl from a metal bunker in the ground on the path to become a walking apocalypse.


	2. Bathe In The Glow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not wrong if it's merciful, is it?

  The man had an air of high class about him. A coy and friendly smile across his lips, shades covering the eyes that I knew were watching me close. “You’re not from around here… Are you?” He asked, raising a slightly dirty glass to his lips and sipping from it. I could smell it from over here. Some kind of alcohol was in the cup, but it was probably his first drink. He wasn’t impaired or intoxicated. “No. I’m just passing through. I’m getting some supplies for the road and then I’m gone.” I watched him as closely as he watched me. I knew this type. He was the kind of man that could convince you to do anything, a smooth talker that could get you to walk yourself right up to some band of slavers for caps without you knowing until it was too late.  
  The radio in the background started playing a new song. “I thought so.” He hummed to the music, taking off his glasses and wiping them off with a cloth he produced from his breast pocket. “You know nobody here, then. No personal ties weighing you down. How would you like to set yourself up for success in the wasteland?” He put the glasses back on. My eyes narrowed as I looked him over. “Just get to the point.” My voice was firm. He was up to something and after the day of running and fighting that I had I wasn’t in the mood for dancing around issues.  
  He seemed to like that. He chuckled, an amused grin creeping onto his lips. “Direct, I see. I’ll get straight to it then.” The shaded man put a briefcase onto the table. Locks clicked and fasteners opened as he undid them, the case opening with the slightest sound of a squeak. Something was placed onto the table, the item being slid over to me as he closed the case. “I am Mister Burke. I work for a very wealthy man. The kind of man who can pay you well if you just take care of a bit of… Business for him.” His hand rotated in circles at the wrist when he paused. He tapped the strange wired device. “This is a fusion pulse charge. All you have to do is attach it to that bomb outside, rig it to explode, and then come to Tenpenny Tower to finish the job. Simple, easy money.” There was nothing. No emotion, I realized, in his voice or in his eyes. I glared at him, disgust beginning to well up within me.  
  I found myself shaking my head as I pushed his little device back to him. “And kill all the innocent people here? I don’t fucking think so.” Why would anyone do that? This town had kind, albeit strange, people in it and he wanted me to blow it all to hell? Burke shook his head with a click of his tongue. “You misunderstand. This town is living on borrowed time. Look at it all. People living in a slum, building a town around a live bomb. Sure they say it’s safe, but look at this. Look at us. If there is at least one person in this world willing to do it, when do you think another will come along? Irradiated people, zombies serving you drinks, all while a lunatic rants in the center of town with bad mannered and suffering people pass by. Nobody should live like this. You’d be speeding up the inevitable is all, and be awarded for your mercy.” That grin reminded me of the raiders. Thinking they were so smooth, so smart, so proud of themselves and confident.  
  But did this town really deserve that? It was better than the way I lived with raiders, at least. Burke did has something of a point, though. When I lived in my vault everything was clean. Sterile. Safe. Out here…. Out here these people were sick, injured, suffering, sleeping on mysteriously stained mattresses and soaking in harmful radiation as the bathed in their own filth. It was disgusting. And who’s to say that somebody else won’t come blow it all up? Raid it? Destroy it? The people here could suffer much worse fates than a quick explosion. My mind began swimming with possibilities. Temptations. Fear for what other fate could befall these suffering humans and the knowledge that with that money I could feed myself. Supply myself and it would help so much on my journey to find the only family I had left.  
  I was brought out of my thoughts by Burke clearing his throat. He slid the pulse charge my way again, his shades lowered so he could look at me over the tops of them. “So, what will it be? Grant them a quick and merciful death… Or wait maybe, for something far worse to do it for you?” I knew what kind of man he was. A smooth talker. And in the back of my mind I told myself that whatever it was he was selling or going to try to get me to do I wasn’t falling for that. After having no voice of my own for so long I wanted to be the one to make my own decisions. But I underestimated my own willpower and his silver tongue. With a slightly shaky hand, I reached forward and took the pulse charge. Burke smiled in that way that meant he knew he had won. He stood from the table and handed me a little map, coordinates scribbled onto it. “I knew I had the right person. Meet me here at Tenpenny tower when your work is done. Tell them you have a meeting with me. I look forward to hearing from you, my dear girl.”  
 I stayed staring at the device in my hands, not answering him. With this little device, I was going to destroy a town. The pure chaos and lives that would be lost, that amount of power held in my own two hands. All I had to do was rig it up to the unstable bomb in the center of town, and I would be giving these people their deaths in a quick way. I didn’t know a lot about explosives, but I was confident that I knew enough to do this.  
I knew more than enough.  
   
  It was easier than I was expecting. The sheriff of this town had accepted my lie that I was disarming the bomb for safety's sake. Maybe this town truly was better off not existing anymore, with their main law enforcement being so trusting of a complete stranger. Even the trip to Tenpenny tower was easy. Just molerats and bloatflies. As the sun set in the sky, my feet hurting and legs aching from the amount of walking I had done the last few days, I stood soaking in a grand view of a dead world upon a mile high balcony. The wind was blowing and the dust below was swirling, shadows cast from decrepit buildings onto the lifeless ground.  
  Burke and the man he worked for, who introduced himself as Alistair Tenpenny, stood to my side conversing amongst one another. Waiting with bated breath and whispering words of encouragement to me as my hand wavered over a button. The button to bring about the destruction I had seeded was in Burke’s briefcase all along, gleaming silver metal on the outside and all blinking buttons and monitors on the inside. “Go on. Let the fireworks begin.” Burke murmured this low beside me, a hand reaching around and being placed firmly on my shoulder.  
  There was nothing stopping any of this now. The charge was planted, the people were unsuspecting. If I walked away now then Burke would just do it himself. I took a breath, listening to the silence of the world in the evening before I broke it.   
With one motion...  
With one button...  
With one loud, deafening, rumbling boom…  
I had brought about an feat of intense destruction.  
  The cloud rose to the heavens, shaped like a mushroom just like the history class in the vault said they were. The radiation would never reach this far, but the force of the explosion certainly did. Rocks rolled closer, trees bent, dust was kicked up like a tidal wave as it all was pushed back. The sky lit up as if somebody had taken a picture of it with a large camera from outer space. It was for only a moment that light, but as the wind pushed back my hair I couldn’t tear my eyes away.It wasn’t until I heard Burke give a hearty, satisfied laugh that I was pulled out of my own thoughts. “Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful, Breathtaking.” He inhaled, the setting sun reflected in his shades. He said something about a suite in the tower for my services while Mister Tenpenny mentioned being paid. But I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t. I was realizing something.  
  Nothing. I felt nothing. There was no guilt like I had thought there would be, no remorse or mourning the loss of life. All I could feel was a rush of exhilaration. Adrenaline. The power to destroy was like a drug, but without the effect of destroying myself at the same time. No negative emotions flooded my system, only the feeling of excitement. And like Burke did back in that saloon, with his look that I regarded with distaste, I smiled.  
A grin laced with the confidence that I was untouchable.


End file.
